Kamal Ghorui
Image credit: X (Twitter)
ASML has announced plans to cut about 1,700 jobs, mainly in its technology and IT organisations. These new plans were announced in a statement by Christophe Fouquet, the CEO of Europe’s biggest technology company, on the same day the Dutch semiconductor equipment maker reported its 13th consecutive year of sales growth. ASML CFO Roger Dassen noted that the cuts follow feedback that the company has a “complex organisation”, which can lead to excessive time spent coordinating processes. During a call with reporters, Dassen said, “We want to make sure engineers can be engineers again,” Bloomberg reported. The restructuring affects Europe’s biggest chip equipment maker as it seeks to streamline operations and reduce organisational complexity, which has been identified as a hindrance to efficiency. The job cuts will mainly affect the company’s employees in the Netherlands, with some in the US, and will primarily focus on the leadership level, Fouquet said. About 4% of the company’s workforce will be affected.ASML is the only maker of advanced lithography machines that are needed to produce high-end semiconductors and has benefited from the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The company reported strong fourth-quarter bookings and expects sales to continue to grow in 2026.
What ASML said during its latest earnings call
In its fourth-quarter bookings, ASML reported orders totalling 13.2 billion euros ($15.8 billion), up from 5.4 billion euros in the previous quarter. This far exceeded the analyst expectations of 6.32 billion euros, according to researcher Visible Alpha.“In the last months, many of our customers have shared a notably more positive assessment of the medium-term market situation, primarily based on more robust expectations of the sustainability of AI-related demand,” Fouquet said in a statement.The orders beat comes as several of ASML’s chipmaker customers raise investment plans amid growing demand for AI logic and memory chips needed by cloud computing companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet’s Google.The Dutch company also increased its outlook for 2026. It now expects full-year sales of between 34 billion and 39 billion euros, compared with analysts’ expectations of 35 billion euros, according to LSEG data. It has previously forecast flat-to-lower sales than in 2025, when sales came in at 32.7 billion euros.“We expect 2026 to be another growth year for ASML’s business”, Fouquet added.Analysts expect the Dutch company to benefit from stronger demand from top customers such as TSMC and Samsung as chipmakers increase capital spending to expand capacity for AI-related chips amid the tighter global supply of memory and AI-accelerator chips.
